My lab is working on a number of projects related to obesity and diabetes . For the past two years, Vipul Periwal and I have been analyzing food intake records to see if there exist any patterns in food intake that correlate with adiposity. We have found evidence that there may be a ?stochastic ratchet? with a very long memory that defends against decreases in food intake much more vigorously than increases. We have just started studying a dietary data set from Mark Levine's lab. We are also constructing system level models based on the known physiology to account for the data. [unreadable] My former post-bac student Heather Bain worked with myself and Kevin Hall in trying to model how the body partitions diet macronutrients into lean and fat compartments. Using empirical cross-sectional data of the relationship between fat and lean mass, we have developed an expression for how substrate utilization adapts to changes of diet, energy expenditure, and body fat such that energy imbalances produced the required changes of body composition. [unreadable] Periwal, Anne Sumner and myself have developed a minimal model of free fatty acid (FFA) suppression by insulin. A consequence of the model is a quantitative measure for FFA akin to insulin sensitivity for glucose. In a separate study, we have developed a panel of measures that can predict when a person can pass an oral glucose tolerance test with nearly perfect specificity for a small cohort of African Americans. We are now trying to apply this method to the NHANES database. [unreadable] Wei Huang and I have been exploring the early stages of differentiation in embryonic stem cells. We have found evidence that the changes in expression of certain genes involved in maintaining pluripotency may be reversible by the administration of different factors. We have also applied a cell clustering model to dictyostelium in collaboration with Alan Kimmel.[unreadable] Sarosh Fatakia and I in collaboration with Stefano Costanzi are attempting to develop a fully automated software tool to classify G-protein coupled receptors through sequence homology for the seven transmembrane regions.[unreadable] Hedi Soula, Michael Buice and I have been working on various projects related to the stochastic dynamics of cortical circuits. Current formalisms either ignore fluctuations altogether or consider neurons to be independent. Soula and I developed a scheme to examine the effects of finite numbers of neurons on the stochastic activity of cortical circuits. Buice and I are developing a new formalism of neural activity that keeps track of both the mean activity of constituent neurons and their correlations.[unreadable] Karen Ong and I in collaboration with Stoney Simons, are developing a biophysical model for steroid regulated gene expression in the presence of various factors.